More and more businesses are using artificial intelligence – and it has the potential to drive innovation and improve productivity growth, according to a new report.
THE the outlook for the global economy begins to “brighten” according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Economic Outlook report from May – and this is partly about AI’s potential to improve productivity growth.
In addition to its “potential to boost trend productivity growth,” AI can also boost innovation, according to the OECD report. However, the organization noted that AI’s estimated impact on productivity is still “subject to considerable uncertainty.”
At the same time, the share of companies starting to use AI “has increased rapidly,” the report said, citing a survey suggesting that about a third of U.S. and European companies used AI in 2023.
“Most of them are large companies,” the OECD report says. “There is some evidence to suggest that the positive impact of AI on growth could be significant for individual companies, but there is so far no clear evidence of economy-wide effects. »
The impact of artificial intelligence on the economy will depend on factors such as the extent of its use by businesses and the extent to which the technology will be used to enhance work rather than replace it, the report said. According to OECD data, AI has the greatest potential effect on the performance of people working in coding, while it has the least effect on customer service workers.
In April 2023, a unique study of its kind of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT could increase productivity in the workplace, especially for new workers. Using data from more than 5,000 customer support agents, the NBER found that an AI assistant improved agents’ daily work, including increasing productivity and improving interactions between agents and customers.
Overall, the OECD projects that global GDP will increase by 3.2% in 2025 and inflation in OECD countries will increase by 3.4%. The organization also predicts that the unemployment rate in OECD countries will reach 5.0% in 2025.
